Tanakh Epistemology A Philosophical Reading Of An Ancient Semitic Text

This study presents a philosophical reading of the native epistemology of the Tanakh. It seeks to provide a maximally noncontroversial account of this form of conceptuality by treating the Tanakh not as religious literature, but as an ancient Semitic epistemic text. The frequency of the verb "know" is used to identify textual locations of epistemic emphasis indigenous to the literature, while analytic philosophy and classical studies are employed to elucidate these passages and set them in transcultural context. Tanakh epistemology is cohesive, nuanced, far-ranging, and bold. Its deepest conceptual commitments voice noncontradictory positions regarding skepticism, perception, physical and nonphysical reality, epistemic limits, and the relation of knowledge to power, desire, and life. The articulation of these positions enables a meta-epistemic assessment of the sometimes variant assumptions of Hellenically-derived philosophical epistemology. Since this form of Greek thought conceptually undergirds the western intellectual tradition, a meta-epistemic engagement of this nature is broadly relevant for western culture. This can be seen in the early Enlightenment in the way Spinoza sets off philosophical against biblical epistemology in his attempt to liberate the western mind from ecclesial control. This study argues that neither early modern Christendom nor Spinoza provide accurate accounts of Tanakh epistemology. The prisms by which ancient forms of Greek and Semitic conceptuality are refracted into early modern Europe are therefore flawed, and with them the western bases for assuming that Greek-derived epistemology is of uniquely transcultural validity and application. Consequences follow for biblical studies, religion, philosophy, and politics, and for other domains in thought and culture.